


sulfur, smoke, and soot

by Odaigahara



Series: Soulmate September 2020 Plus [9]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Burns, Hurt Deceit | Janus Sanders, M/M, Police Brutality, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:08:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27691897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odaigahara/pseuds/Odaigahara
Summary: Day 18: First Thoughts*Virgil doesn’t turn to stone when he pulls off the mask. Gorgon doesn’t even twitch, either- just lays there on the back seat of Virgil’s roughed-up Camry, burns weeping, and breathes.His eyes are closed. Virgil isn’t about to mistake that for genuine unconsciousness.“Before you freak out about identities or whatever,” Virgil settles on saying just in case, chest tight, “I’d like to point out that-” He has to swallow just saying it- “Half of your face is burned to shit. Even if I knew you in real life, I wouldn’t be able to recognize you now.”
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Deceit | Janus Sanders
Series: Soulmate September 2020 Plus [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932382
Comments: 15
Kudos: 135





	sulfur, smoke, and soot

**Author's Note:**

> Tw's at end notes
> 
> Thanks to alicat54c for beta reading!!

Virgil doesn’t turn to stone when he pulls off the mask. Gorgon doesn’t even twitch, either- just lays there on the back seat of Virgil’s roughed-up Camry, burns weeping, and breathes.

His eyes are closed. Virgil isn’t about to mistake that for genuine unconsciousness.

“Before you freak out about identities or whatever,” Virgil settles on saying just in case, chest tight, “I’d like to point out that-” He has to swallow just saying it- “Half of your face is burned to shit. Even if I knew you in real life, I wouldn’t be able to recognize you now.”

He’s only taking off the mask at all because Gorgon’s showing signs of a healing factor, which means keeping the mask might make the villain’s skin heal over it. Virgil would feel smug at how he pegged Gorgon for a hidden healing factor after the first YouTube video, but he’s having a hard time feeling anything but numb, fuzzy shock.

Dragon Witch, the greatest hero their city has ever had, is two blocks away, fighting off the rest of a villain syndicate that decided to ambush her.

Dragon Witch saw Gorgon, an unaffiliated villain who’s really more of a vigilante, and assumed he was part of the group even though he never has been before- even though he was frozen, holding up his hands, opening his mouth to speak.

She saw him and breathed fire and burned him _alive_ , and if Virgil hadn’t intervened- hadn’t jumped from where he’d been hiding behind the counter of the local deli, hadn’t run to the alleyway while everyone else was long evacuated, hadn’t dragged Gorgon away despite the screams and put out the rest of the flames-

Gorgon would be dead.

That would be bad enough, if she hadn’t come back. If she hadn’t _checked_ like she wanted to make sure Gorgon was dead. Virgil heard her roar of irritation even with buildings between them. She didn't only want to incapacitate. She might not even have known about the healing factor. She wanted- _wants_ \- Gorgon dead, and doesn’t care that he wasn’t part of the fight.

Virgil would wish he was too in shock to draw the connection to all the other villains she’s killed, to look through the lens of that callous murderousness and see what it means, but he’s too steeped in conspiracy videos and detailed study of fighting styles to feel that way for real. The gears of his brain have been greased for years; stopping them turning is a lot more difficult than getting them in motion, and this whole day has made a lot of bewildering moments horribly clear.

He’s always had the hobby of watching villains. When he was younger he thought he had to _be_ one, before his brother Thomas got custody and taught him he wasn’t an irredeemably bad kid, so he'd gotten into the habit of spending hours going through newspaper clippings and websites with layouts that crawled out of the Dark Ages, cataloguing bad guys from A-Z. Villain history is his area of expertise.

Dragon Witch took out the Doom Syndicate in the first year of her reign. She captures villains and dime-a-dozen criminals, but those villains and criminals have a habit of offering so much resistance that she has no choice but to take them down permanently. Virgil always thought that was fishy, but he assumed like a moron that it was _cops_ making those claims, arresting people violently or shooting wounded villains they didn’t think they could handle by themselves once the superhero left.

 _Now_ , though-

A year and a half ago, Dragon Witch threw Prince Sparkling through a building, and he didn’t reappear for six months. Ten months ago, the soulmate duo Hypnos and Asclepius were arrested so violently that one of them had to be taken to jail with a broken jaw, and even after they escaped, Hypnos never appeared in the field again. Two months ago, a minor mafia branch burned down with everyone inside- and Virgil _knows_ they were mafia because he used to go to the pizza place front every other day after work, and one of the kids he’d gone to school with had a second cousin who worked for the Don.

Virgil saw the obituaries in the paper. Even the waiters were burnt to a crisp, and some of them never saw a gun in their lives.

Gorgon still doesn't move. Virgil eyes him, waiting for the villain to lurch up and grab his throat to threaten him- that’s what villains _do_ , it’s like it’s in the handbook- but the only motion is the stuttering rise of his chest. The inside of the car is so hot it’s hard to breathe, stuffy with uncirculated air, but Virgil can’t risk turning it on for some AC; the Dragon Witch might hear the rumble of the engine in an area that was supposed to be evacuated, and it could bring her flying. He has the sunshade up, like he did before he rushed Gorgon to his car. He’s crouched awkwardly in the space between his passenger seat- as far forward as it can go- and the backseat where Gorgon’s laying, and the plastic of the car seat is digging into his back.

The car smells like burnt leather and flesh. Virgil threw up outside, but that doesn’t stop his gorge from rising when he thinks about it for more than a second. The scale of Gorgon’s wounds makes him dizzy with horror and nausea, chills his skin with fear. If Dragon Witch finds them- if she looks at Virgil and thinks, correctly, _collaborator-_

Then she can go fuck herself. Virgil’s no snitch, not for villains who weren’t even part of the attack at the time and not for villains who _were_ , either. He saw the terror on Gorgon’s face when he realized he was out in the open.

He saw the way he tried to run.

The burns are worst down the right side of Gorgon’s body. Most of his clothes were eaten away by the flames, but now that Virgil’s watched the healing factor at work, he can’t leave the remnants to be melded into Gorgon’s body. Gorgon's powers don't seem to allow him to push the foreign materials out, or at least not when there's so much damage. Without some kind of first aid, he'll have to dig all the pieces out by himself later, and basically flay himself alive in the process. Easier to do it now.

Gorgon dresses like a 1920s cartoon villain, so there's a lot of fabric to go around. He doesn’t dress more efficiently because he doesn’t _attack_ people, not when he doesn’t have to- Virgil's pretty sure the guy’s not even really a combatant most of the time.

He pulls in an unsteady breath, helpless hatred stirring in his gut, and forces himself to drag the first strip of seared fabric from Gorgon’s flesh.

Gorgon moans as it comes loose, a cry too low and weak to be a scream. Virgil freezes, listening for the sound of wingbeats overhead, but nothing comes. Fuck. He’s gonna have to keep going, but if Gorgon wakes up more and screams-

Better to get it over with fast. Virgil goes for the largest scraps first, prying them loose as wet burned flesh gets under his fingernails, and Gorgon twitches but doesn’t wake. The pile of bloody fabric grows at Virgil’s knees, stench so strong it makes him want to never breathe again, but he can’t stop; he has to get the remains of Gorgon’s pants off too, has to do the work so he can heal properly. Then Virgil can drop him somewhere his friends might pick him up and never mention this again, and hope that the Dragon Witch doesn’t decide to look at security cameras or parking meters to see who might have foiled her murder attempt.

God, he’s so fucked.

He twists himself half over Gorgon to pull off what’s left of his pants, and then when he has to deal with underwear he just averts his eyes, out of squeamishness as much as modesty. The burns are everywhere, black and sooty in some places and weeping white-pink in others, boiling up thick blisters and raw red skin where the healing factor tries to work. Virgil forces himself to yank some of the pieces loose, flinching at the blood that rushes to fill the wounds where the skin was closing over the fabric completely. He has to breathe through his mouth, too, tears in his eyes he tries hard not to get in the wounds, but that’s okay. The only one there to see is Gorgon, and he’s down an eye at the moment anyway.

Next he has to turn Gorgon over to get at his back, but thankfully the fabric there isn’t burnt so badly- Gorgon took the flames to his front. Virgil can pull off the larger pieces of his shirt and fancy coat all at once, propping Gorgon upright to work and settling him back down once he’s done. His eyes catch rudely on the scribble at the back of Gorgon’s neck, though, under where his collar would usually cover and obviously a soulmark, and he shouldn't be looking at all but-

_Shit whats Gorgon doing here hes supposed to be robbing museums and stuff_

His blood freezes.

If breathing was hard before, it’s impossible now. Virgil jerks back, letting Gorgon’s head hit the seat with a thump- fuck, shit, he’s making him _worse_ \- and squeezes into the corner of the back of the passenger seat and the car door, knees at his face and heart forcing a staccato beat in his ribcage. He’s fucked. He’s _fucked_ , he’s _so_ fucked, those are words and they’re what your soulmate thinks when they see you and Virgil’s are _I don’t know you_ and that could have meant _anyone_ , why did it mean Gorgon, how could it mean a _criminal_ -

He recognizes his own thoughts on the villain's skin, and he _knows_ what that means: if they’re caught, nothing Virgil says can save him from prison or execution. There are _ways_ to follow a soulmate bond once formed, and Virgil’s been touching Gorgon way too much for it not to have taken, even if newness means it’ll be so weak it might as well not exist. Words are law. Words are destiny, and Virgil’s always dreamed of finding his soulmate but not like- _never_ like this.

A known soulmate is an automatic accomplice. Even if Virgil leaves Gorgon in a bush somewhere, if the guy’s ever caught again they’ll test for a bond and it’ll lead right _to_ him, and it’ll be no use saying they’ve never met. Hell, Gorgon might decide to kill Virgil himself to avoid the loose end. They’ll be compasses pointing at each other, tuned to an inescapable North, and Virgil defied the law to save Gorgon in the first place. No defense will be enough.

His breath come faster. What’s Thomas going to do without him? What’s _Patton_ going to do, how is Virgil supposed to get out of this when unless Gorgon _dies-_

His brain stutters over the concept, unable to grab hold. Gorgon’s _healing_. The only way he dies now is if Virgil drags him out of the car and leaves him, or smothers him or, he doesn’t know, tries and decapitates him completely- and even if Gorgon weren’t his soulmate, none of those would ever be options.

He doesn't have a way out.

Sirens wail in the distance. Smoke rises up in thin noxious trails from one street over, and if Virgil strains his ears past his soulmate’s labored breathing he can hear the sound of beating wings, the Dragon Witch winding down from a fight.

Gorgon shifts and goes horribly, purposefully still, and Virgil’s panic hits a new high. His soulmate twists across the seats and gets his elbows under him, breath coming faster, burns opening and weeping afresh-

“Stay _down!”_ Virgil hisses, but Gorgon doesn’t listen, just yanks himself up and goes for the door and if the Witch sees them they’re both so dead this whole day will have been a _cakewalk-_

Virgil wrestles Gorgon down and shoves a hand over his mouth just in time to muffle a scream. The motion must jostle every burn he has, scraping raw sensitized skin across rough leather and putting on pressure, _god_ , can’t Gorgon just be unconscious again- but Virgil can’t stop until Gorgon’s flat on the seat again, out of direct sight of the windows. The villain bucks under him, weak and crying, but Virgil’s body weight is too much; after a few agonizing moments he goes still, glassy-eyed and gasping, and Virgil takes his hand away from his mouth. Gorgon didn’t even bite it.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Virgil bites out in a whisper, “but we’re like a block away from where you got burned and if you try to sit up she’ll see us, okay? And then we’re _both_ screwed.” Gorgon just trembles; Virgil gets the idea that he’s not thinking too clearly, and says, hating each second he has to hold him down, “Don’t get up. Nod if you understand.”

A nod. Virgil shifts back to kneel beside the backseat, squeezing himself into the space and for once pitifully glad he’s short, and Gorgon shuffles to face him with the good eye, panting with pain. “I don’t- know you,” he rasps.

“You don’t have to,” Virgil says, straining to hear signs of incoming death. “Just- I saw you get burned.”

Gorgon stiffens. “She’ll _kill_ you.”

“ _Seriously_ don’t remind me,” Virgil hisses. “We have to stay here until it’s night at least, but if there’s a place I can drop you off after, we can never see each other again and that’ll be great for me. Where am I dropping you?”

“Dropping-?” Gorgon stares at him, tears falling freely from his one good eye. He doesn’t seem to notice them. “I don’t- can’t, I-”

“Fuck,” Virgil snarls under his breath, and Gorgon bares his teeth and flinches in the same moment, because it disturbed the healing flesh of his face. “Look, I’ll ask you again come nightfall, okay? Just be quiet and don’t move till then.”

“But she’ll kill you,” Gorgon says again, weaker and confused, and Virgil realizes the villain is nowhere near as coherent as he thought. There’s a feverish sheen over Gorgon’s good eye, and his hands are twitching and clenching, body shuddering as he tries and fails to find a position that doesn’t hurt.

“I don’t really have a choice anymore,” Virgil says, instead of _actually you’re my soulmate_ or _she shouldn’t have hurt you like this in the first place_ or _yeah no shit sherlock we’re both doomed and it’s your fault.  
_

Gorgon stares at him. Virgil forces himself to smirk, confident like he’s going up against some rando in an early 2000s alternative music trivia contest, and says, “It’s fine. Keep quiet and it’ll stay that way, got it?”

He’s lying, probably. The Dragon Witch could’ve heard them already. She could be waiting above them, about to ignite the gas tank and blow up the car, and Gorgon might even survive that to get killed personally instead. But Virgil has a blanket to throw over him once his skin’s a little less ruined, and a passenger seat to pretend to be asleep in, and once he can dump Gorgon where his villain friends can reach him he never has to see him again. 

Gorgon can be more cautious after this. He won’t have any reason to check for a burgeoning soulbond. Maybe he’ll even fake his death from burn wounds and retire, and Virgil won’t ever have to worry about a SWAT team breaking his door down to take him in for collaborating with a vigilante.

Virgil just has to make sure they survive the next few hours. Just a few hours, and life can go back to normal, and he can clean up the inside of his car and never think about any of this again. 

Gorgon closes his eyes, breath going quieter as he lapses back into unconsciousness. Virgil shudders in a breath that tastes like blood and cooked flesh, sweating from the stifling heat of the parked car, and wishes he could be that optimistic.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: attempted murder in a way similar to police brutality (superhero brutality, basically), extreme burns, panic attacks, manhandling, hiding, uncertain ending


End file.
